If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

So you reduced your argument in this thread to what your OC-ed 2600k would do? All this , so you can show off what you have? Thanks for trolling me while I trying to help somebody, it's really nice of you.

I'm not showing off. People on the gamespot pc hardware and overclock.net have better pc'z than me all the time.

Buying new hardware is always very exciting and rewarding experience, enjoy it while it last

I would go for the MSI card if you don't need the game. That card it's one of the most power efficient cards ever, (it's almost unbelievable, but) it's asking for less then 65W average under load, and it's also less noisy too. (just don't forget that there is no SLI option with the low-end Nvidia cards, so you will need to sell it if you want to upgrade). You might want to overclock the memory, which is the weakness of this card. 1500-1550Mhz should be quite easy and safe for 24/7, and will give you about 15% extra performance.

I have that Hitachi drive, I use it as a backup drive, it's too noisy in my opinion. Perhaps you could go for the 500GB WD blue?

Good spot on the drive - changed it to the WD . Check out the overclock on the MSI card http://www.overclockers.com/msi-gtx-...cs-card-review over 6000 3Dmark 11 points stable - INSANE! I haven't been able to play ql(or anything decent) for over 2 and a half years, and these are the first components I've purchased since I got the i7 2 years ago. I'm definitely excited coming from an archaic-stone-age-wants-to-die machine. I'm shockingly bad when it comes to hardware for someone who has a computer science background so thanks again - really need to brush up on this at some point. I'm hoping for the remaining components to come tomorrow but most likely it will be Wednsday. I'll let you know how it all goes.

Good spot on the drive - changed it to the WD . Check out the overclock on the MSI card http://www.overclockers.com/msi-gtx-...cs-card-review over 6000 3Dmark 11 points stable - INSANE! I haven't been able to play ql(or anything decent) for over 2 and a half years, and these are the first components I've purchased since I got the i7 2 years ago. I'm definitely excited coming from an archaic-stone-age-wants-to-die machine. I'm shockingly bad when it comes to hardware for someone who has a computer science background so thanks again - really need to brush up on this at some point. I'm hoping for the remaining components to come tomorrow but most likely it will be Wednsday. I'll let you know how it all goes.

I wish you good luck.

There are no sinks on the memory chips, so be careful with the 1700-ish OC, do it gently and test it out. I said 1500-1550Mhz because I know that it's safe.
The 650ti is a low end card, even if it's the fastest among the current low-ends. This means that it's intended to give you good fps with medium settings in games. It will perform similar to the GTX560 but with half the power consumption.
If you avoid ultra resolution textures, heavy DX11 tessellation and DOF or 16XAF + 4XAA (or above), then you won't have to go for heavy OC because the card will run the games just fine in 1600x900.
Don't worry about the low (20-30ish) fps numbers what you can see in reviews, because those reviewers usually use ultra settings (like 4xAA+16XAF which is unfair to do with cards using a 128bit wide bus). The middle settings like 4XAF or FXAA is what you wanna use, and you will get great fps in most of the games, but you can easily max out the huge number of older dx9 games for sure (for example: games based on the unreal3 engine or source engine, etc), those won't be a problem at all.

OMG! I'm actually kind of regretting my decision to go with the 650 ti now. I only went by the 3dmark 11 benchmarks and thought that the performance in relation to other cards would be consistent as far as actual games - but looking at the charts it seems very much on the low end and is kind of dissapointing . if I had forked out an extra £60 I would be near the top end with the 660ti. hmmm..... not sure, on a downer now.

OMG! I'm actually kind of regretting my decision to go with the 650 ti now. I only went by the 3dmark 11 benchmarks and thought that the performance in relation to other cards would be consistent as far as actual games - but looking at the charts it seems very much on the low end and is kind of dissapointing . if I had forked out an extra £60 I would be near the top end with the 660ti. hmmm..... not sure, on a downer now.

This never gonna work like this, because you don't know what you want
All of this is started with a "what's the cheapest card what would run QL with stable 125fps?" question. Perhaps you could write a quick list about the games you are planning to play besides QL, and check how the 650ti performs in those titles. There are always faster hardware what you could buy, so it's important to decide what is your goal. If you are worried about the performance in other games but don't have extra "£60", return the card and get a 7850 instead, it has a much better price/performance ratio, like all the AMD cards in the last few weeks.

The 650ti is a good little card. Yes it's a bit expensive compared to the AMD counterparts, but that is how it is now and price/performance is not everything, (Quakers mostly use Nvidia for a reason).
Most of the games you missed in the last 2-3 years were dx9 console ports or games having a dx9-10 mode, and you can max out any of those games with that card @1600x900.
What you can't do is to play games like Metro, Crysis, BF3,etc on DX11-Ultra settings, or to use 16XAF+4XAA in modern titles and other bandwidth-killer features what would saturate the 1GB memory or 128bit wide bus of the card.

Again, it's around the same as the GTX560 in games, and a lot of people are happily using such cards without problems. If you are planning to play Rage, Portal2, Sc2, Skyrim, Diablo3, CS:Go and other non-DX11 games like those, the 650ti will run them very well, don't worry about that.

edit: Yes the 7850<660ti=<7950 would be much better choice if you want higher detail, but there is no stopping if you go like that, you can go on until you stop at the GTX680, that one will max out everything for you...for a while